Aue, page 25
Kat closes the car door, leans against it. ‘I went inside and I saw Toko’s teeth on the floor of the Craypot.’
Dad speaks up then. ‘Kataraina, don’t.’
‘Yes, let’s look for a fucking pearl earring. White like a tooth.’
‘Go home,’ Mum says. ‘We don’t need your self-pity here. Not now.’
And because I’m just wind, air, hā, blowing around people, being drawn into their mouths, lungs, thoughts, I know this now – Kataraina sees something. Something shiny.
Before walking to it, though, she thinks. She thinks about why she has come here. She has come here to tell her Mum and Dad she needs help. Because last night Stu got mad, and though he didn’t punch her out right, which he has before, he was very angry because she’d put on a tight shirt and come down the stairs thinking she might to go to a friend’s house while he went to pool.
She didn’t, in the end. He made sure it wasn’t worth it.
When he got home they argued in bed, and he lifted his arm and then he set his hand on her neck and applied some pressure to her throat, not much – and for a second she could not breathe. She would rather he’d punched her, or said something mean, pushed her in her back.
But, it was just a second. Just a second.
She feels silly then. There’s no mark. Worse could happen when you hug someone too tight. What was she going to say to them? Stu pressed on my neck? They know he’s done worse, and she’s protected him.
And it’s been a long time since he’s hit her, really. Ages.
Things are going well.
She walks to the shiny thing, walks to it slowly, and steps on it, turns her foot, crushes it down into the gravel, walks back to Tommy’s car, gets in and drives back to the farm.
Just a second. Nothing really.
She gets home in time to get a decent dinner on.
Ārama
Beth and I begged Tom Aiken to cook us a piece of the eel I’d caught.
Tom told us it would taste like muddy river water, but we told him about how we ate worms sometimes and this would be nothing. In the end he said of course, a hunter should eat what he’d hunted, and he cut the very end from the eel, and rolled it in some foil, and put it onto a hot rock outside the fire. It sizzled and juice rolled in oily lines down into the dirt.
The eel wasn’t that bad, we ate it with our fingers, and even licked the juice off them. We felt brave and like real adventurers eating the eel I’d caught in the dark river at night. Lupo wagged his tail and his tongue was hanging out as he watched us. I held a piece of eel in the palm of my hand. He ate it. Then carried on sniffing and licking my hand until I gave him some more. Lupo was Italian for wolf, Beth had told me. Beth’s aunty went to Italy once, and when she came back Beth called her on the phone and asked for a cool Italian name for her new dog and her aunty gave her one.
‘Dad was pissed, though, he wanted him to be called Sav. And I was like, “Sav, like a saveloy. Dumb.” He said, “No, Sav like savage,” but all I could think of was savs, so, yeah, nah.’
Me and Beth would sleep with Aunty Kat and Lupo. Tom Aiken would sleep alone in the other tent. When we went to bed Tom Aiken winked at me and said, ‘You look after the girls, river warrior. I’ll sleep good knowing they are with you.’
‘I don’t need him looking after me,’ Beth stamped her foot.
‘Look after each other then.’
Tom Aiken was the best. He should be Aunty Kat’s husband and there should be no Uncle Stu.
When we went to bed I could smell the campfire in our hair, and feel the dirt between my toes. I wished we could stay there forever, camping and running up the river, and smelling like dirt and fire when we went to bed at night.
‘Does Lupo really mean wolf?’ I asked Beth.
‘Yup.’
‘Uncle Stu has a gun,’ I told her. ‘One for hunting, one for pests.’
Beth shuffled closer to me. Lupo was squashing our feet. We were both thinking about Uncle Stu having a gun.
‘Maybe my dad has one too,’ Beth said.
That made us feel better.
Then Beth pulled out the book with the picture of the people rowing a boat to an island on its cover. The one she made Aunty Kat buy her from the guy wearing sheets on the street. The book about world peace.
She switched on her torch light.
‘Read it to me, Django.’
‘You can read now.’
‘I know, but still, please.’
Beth hardly ever said please, so I read to her while she held the torch.
‘Sex is an ab-ab-surd thing. Imagine it. Imagine a man and a wo-man having sex without any ro-man-tic at-tach-ment. Imagine that they have no de-sire but to cree-ate an-o-ther human. Imagine people not fuu-elled by a story in their head. A story ex-plain-ing what they are bio …’ – I pointed to the word – ‘bio, bio, bio-log-ical feeling.’
‘Give it,’ Beth snatched the book. She read on, ‘Im-a-gine that there is no ch-ch-ch-em-is-tree. How would hum-an-ity even ex-ist? Without po-e-tree, songs, hair gro-win’ long and per-fuuume and gu-i-tars we would have become ex-tin-ct. There’d be no pee-oo-ple without love. And what’s love? Would you have bot-he-red with love unless love made you feel like a child playing the most fan-tas-tic game? Cat and moo-uuse. Hide and seek. Without roo-ro-man-tic love, the world woo-uuld would just be trees and rii-vers rivers and ice-cap-ped mo-un-ta-ins mountains and birds now. Just an-animals. Yet ro-man-tic love is just an ill-ill-ill-loo-son.’
Aunty Kat unzipped the tent. ‘Hey. Lights out.’
Beth stuffed the book under her pillow. ‘What are you and Dad doing anyway?’
‘What do you think we’re doing? Playing tiddlywinks? We’re tidying up. Putting out the fire. Coming to bed soon. Go to sleep now.’
She zipped the tent back up.
Beth pulled the book out again. ‘Pee-people are an-i-mals. They might write po-e-tree and let-ters and sing. But they are an-animals.’
Beth closed the book.
‘You’ve got real good at reading, Beth.’
‘Like I said, I want to move to Auckland and get a job in my aunty’s office in the big city. Smart car. Remember. Me and you. Husband and wife. No yuck stuff. No poetry. We are Django and Doc. Not Django and Broomhilda. Look at the mess those two made.’
‘They lived happily ever after.’
‘Did they? Sure we saw them ride off, but did they?’
Lupo came up to lick our faces, maybe get a bit more eel juice off our chins. And it might have been the wind, but outside it sounded like our army of bees was circling and circling, keeping watch.
Taukiri
Dream I’m singing to her. A love song, softest I’ve sung it.
You can make any song soft and yours. I make Pat Benatar’s ‘We Belong’ soft and mine. For Megan.
We are kissing in my car and I’m teasing her, and I’m gonna do all sorts of things to her now, and she’s laughing, she’s laughing like there’s so much more hope in the story, more than we thought.
‘I want you – always will. Again and again. You ready?’ I ask.
She laughs. ‘You’re too young for me.’
‘Like the stars?’ I say and bite her hair.
‘How’d you find my attic, boy?’
I peck at her cheeks, over her nose, to the freckle on her eye. Most beautiful starfish I’ve seen.
‘You brought me in from the rain,’ I say.
‘Wet bird,’ she says.
‘Let’s go together. Let’s go get Ari together.’
She climbs into the driver’s seat. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘Good. And I’ll sleep.’
Dream that when I wake, we are almost at the ferry. So close now.
I wake for real, my head throbbing, taste blood in my mouth, sit up. ‘Hey,’ I say.
The voice is murky and black and my ears are ringing. ‘I knew your mother,’ it says.
I look into the rearview mirror.
In the moonlight his teeth look so broken.
Ārama
Tom Aiken thought it would be best to arrive home right on milking so that Uncle Stu wouldn’t be home. I didn’t want to go back. Wanted to stay by the Conway River and live there.
I packed my things back in my schoolbag. Real slow. Then I was worried I’d forgotten to pack my plasters, so I emptied everything out again. Found the plasters. Counted them. There were fifty-three left. Folded everything back up, rugby jersey, shorts, wet togs, even my underwear.
Toothbrush? Emptied everything out again.
‘Hurry up,’ Aunty Kat growled. ‘Tom’s got work.’
Stubbed my toe on a tree root walking to the car. Stopped. Emptied my schoolbag. Got the box of plasters. Put one on my toe.
Counted them again, carefully.
‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ Aunty Kat growled.
Only fifty-two left now.
Packed everything up again. Got in the car, tried to think of something we should do before we left, but before I could, we were off.
On the drive home Tom Aiken told Aunty Kat that she should just pack her bags and take me and go. We should find Taukiri and head down south to Nanny and Koro, and everyone could just start looking after what was left of this family. Aunty Kat was nodding but I could see her hands holding each other tight, like they weren’t sure.
‘You know, Kat, Stu ain’t gonna change. He has been and always will be an arsehole. More than that, Kat. Actually he is more than that.’
‘You don’t know him like I do, Tommy. He can be sweet.’
‘Really? Can he, Kat? I don’t think so. And Ari,’ Tom Aiken lowered his voice, ‘does Ari think so? Does Ari think he can be sweet? That’s one thing Colleen was right about.’
‘She was right about more.’
‘Like?’
‘Jade.’
‘No she wasn’t. She was not right about Jade.’
‘If it hadn’t been for her …’
‘There’d be no Tauk.’
‘Toko would be alive.’
‘Stop it, Kat.’ Tom Aiken was looking at me and Beth in the rearview mirror. Lupo was asleep between us, his head in Beth’s lap. Bum in mine. And I hoped he wouldn’t fart like he had all night after eating the eel. I had almost died from the stink in the tent, which Beth had tried to blame on me, because her precious Lupo could do no wrong. Just then he let out a stinker and I wound down the window and Aunty Kat was yelling. ‘You stop it, Tommy. Stop telling me I should be driving off with my dead sister’s son to go find my dead brother’s … She’s probably dead too! Like she wanted!’
‘Kat!’ Tom Aiken yelled.
Lupo woke, let out a growl, the hair along his back stood up. Beth patted him. ‘He doesn’t like yelling,’ she said, ‘that’s probably why he doesn’t like your uncle Stu.’
‘He’s not my uncle Stu.’
Tom Aiken turned up the radio.
Beth waved me close with her hand. I leaned in, ‘I thought Taukiri was your brother?’
‘He is,’ I said.
‘Who’s Jade?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘There were a lot of dead people in that conversation,’ Beth said. ‘Like a movie.’
The smell of Lupo’s fart was gone and I wound the window back up and used my finger to write ‘Au Feedezeen, Uncle Stu’ into the glass.
Then the name ‘Jade’ over and over.
Uncle Stu’s steel-capped boots were not at the door. And his truck was not in the drive.
We pulled up and Tom Aiken stopped the car.
‘Go in and pack your bags, Kat. I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go.’ He sounded angry.
Aunty Kat didn’t answer him. I took my bone carving in my hand and held my breath. I wanted her to say that she’d just pack our bags and we’d go. Tom Aiken touched Aunty Kat’s face. He touched the black bruise with his thumb. The black eye Uncle Stu gave her. A tear ran down her cheek. I wanted to take a breath, but I couldn’t because I needed to hear her say we were going, we were going right now.
‘You’re my family,’ Tom Aiken said. ‘Please, Kat.’
‘I don’t know.’
I was getting dizzy, needing air. But I held my breath. Beth’s mouth was open wide. I heard Lupo pop another fart. I wouldn’t smell it holding my breath. Then Beth snapped her mouth shut and screwed up her face, punched me. ‘You’re disgusting, Ari.’
I kept holding my breath.
‘Do it for Toko, everyone has been through enough. I didn’t do enough for him that night. Truth is, I made it worse. I know I did. I’m the reason he’s dead. I need to be the reason you live. You’re not living. Please.’
Suddenly me holding my breath and Tom Aiken’s sadness made magic together, because Aunty Kat said: ‘Okay.’
And I opened my mouth and sucked and sucked, and the breath rushed in, and I was a kite in the sky then, bees in my bones and a kite in the sky, and wind in my hair.
I almost felt sorry for Uncle Stu. But mostly, I was just spinning under the sun, beaming, buzzing, fizzing.
Jade
Jade never found her feet again. They hurt when she walked, like her tail bone did, and she was afraid she’d be forced to live for three hundred more years, feeling like she had shards of glass in all her smallest bones. Her head forever adjusting, trying to navigate life on land after too long at sea.
She’d only known life with a man.
Good man or bad man. She’d only known what it felt like to belong to someone. What it was like to have a system. Good or bad. Galley or gang house. Fresh cod or yesterday’s fish burger.
She stumbled through life for so many years after burying her husband and deserting her son.
One day she received a letter.
She had stayed in one place long enough, for once, to be tracked down. Inside was a cheque. And a note: Taukiri is happy.
Jade hated herself for the way that made her feel.
The number on the cheque was not big enough for her to pretend she was more than who she was, but big enough to put down a deposit on a bungalow on Rakiura. An island Toko had once taken her to. A place they’d shopped for the ship’s stores and bought a bag of dried figs.
There she stayed put.
A letter had come once before when she had stayed put long enough to be found. She almost hoped it might happen again. A letter, a call, maybe even a knock on her door.
She hoped for a chance to ask the only sister she had for forgiveness, for things no one even knew of: how she had wanted to jump from the boat with Taukiri in her arms. And other things. Other things she had done, other cuts she had made. What everyone had suffered over: Toko dead. The fact that if she’d never come into his life he would still be alive.
But no letter came.
Jade’s hair greyed, her face became lined.
The scars on her ribs, though, looked as if she’d cut herself only days ago.
When she thought of the baby who died in her belly because she’d bled too much and had too much pain to kill, she knew she deserved every version of loneliness and isolation there was.
Rakiura provided isolation, facilitated the loneliness.
Until. One spring morning Jade’s phone rang. It was Aroha calling, Aroha calling her and asking: ‘Is it too late to fix this?’
Jade didn’t know.
‘We might as well try.’ And Aroha laughed.
‘We might as well.’
Aroha would bring Taukiri down to Rakiura on the boat Jade and Toko had once lived on.
‘Do you mind? Would you mind seeing her, seeing Felicity?’
Jade couldn’t be sure, but she said, ‘No,’ like she was sure. ‘I’ll see my son. So what does a boat matter?’
‘I took him,’ Aroha said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘I left him.’
When they didn’t arrive Jade found some courage and called Colleen, and Colleen told her what had happened.
‘They were coming here,’ Jade said. ‘To me.’
‘Well, of course they were.’ Colleen hung up the phone.
Jade decided she would kill herself. She walked to some cliffs, because she wanted to die flying.
She leaned over the edge and looked down. Something in her badly wanted to jump, and something didn’t. Something wanted to smash into the white-toothed bottom below. Something wanted to suffer it out. That’s what she deserved. She sucked her breath deep into her stomach. The wind picked up and made a sudden, human-like protest. She was pushed back. A cry. And again she was pushed away by the hand of the wind, pushed away from the wide open space at the edge.
She was wild then, wild at herself. And ran. Found herself sprinting, leaping logs and puddles and brooks. She charged through the paddocks and the twisting trail, wild at herself. She ripped a branch from a tree as she went, and hurled it like a spear through the air.
She arrived panting back at her little island house and took out pages from a closed square drawer. Pages and pages of scrawl she’d locked and boxed. She pushed them under her arm and walked out of the house and down to the bay.
At the water’s edge she held the pages.
‘I wrote our story, Toko,’ she cried. ‘Dumb-arse I am, I can write. You wouldn’t believe it,’ she laughed, ‘but I can write.’
She sniffed. ‘I couldn’t write it all though.’
‘In our story we met on a beach. That’s what would have happened, if we’d been lucky. But we will – in another life, my Toko. In another life we’ll meet on a beach. Where did we meet, baby? Right, it was the hospital. You came with Tommy. We went to the beach after, didn’t we? But to tell my story it was beach first, hospital after. What’s time anyway? I let myself believe we met there. You deserved that. You played your guitar, and I danced. It’s a better way to tell a story. Because the beginning can be anywhere and for me it was beside the sea, you singing, me dancing.
